The Adventures of Burton Clift Hogwarts
by Frances1
Summary: Clift is an origional character who has many different adventures. This one takes him to the mysteries and enchantments of Hogwarts. Rating may go up.
1. The Stranger

Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter or Hogwarts or any of the setting. I only own original characters such as Burton Clift and anybody else you do not recognize as cannon characters. Thanks!

The Stranger

Hogwarts castle was alight with many candles and enchantments as the opening banquet begins. Many students sit at the four tables and teachers sat at the head table chatting merrily amongst themselves, and a long line of new students stood nervously waiting for their turn to be sorted into their houses. All was well inside the castle, and nobody had a care in the world as to what was happening outside of the Great Hall at the moment.

A tall dark figure crossed the grounds that night. He wasn't to his knowledge, a wizard, but unlike most muggles, he could see Hogwarts. Clothed in black and brown with shoulder length brown hair, the weary man limped his way into the castle without much notice from anybody, or so he thought.

Upon entering the castle, the man stumbled around in hopes of finding a place to clean his wounds, rest, and have food at hand when he needed it. Another important thing would be to thoroughly conceal himself from everyone. He didn't want anyone to stumble upon him and cause a scare. He made his way to the first door that he saw, but steered quickly away as this door led to the Great Hall as the banquet was taking place. He then proceeded to the staircase and climbed to the next floor. The next door that he tried was the door to a vacant classroom. This may have proved useful except for the fact that people would be using this room probably the next day.

He was just about to climb another flight of stairs when he noticed another door farther down with a sign that said "Out of Order." He tried the door and it opened into a lavatory with a broken sink and a hole in the wall. He moved toward the sinks and took a cloth from his pack. He wetted this cloth with warm water and grabbed something that resembled soap. He then investigated the hole which led on into a passage of sorts. Seeing this as probably the best place in the castle, he disappeared into the hole in the wall and followed a long passage into a dungeon of sorts with many places to hide himself without being noticed by the other people in the castle.

The feast had ended and all of the students headed happily back to their dormitories. None of them suspected anything out of the ordinary as they walked and talked with their friends and taught valuable lessons to the first years. The teachers made their own ways back to their respective quarters with a few words amongst each other. Two, however, seemed to be disquieted about something, but neither knew exactly what was hanging on their minds.

Albus Dumbledore is an very old and wise man. He is also the headmaster of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, and he is also normally fairly sure of himself and his actions. He sat at the head table after all of the students and teachers had left the Great Hall pondering the feeling that something may be amiss in his school. He didn't notice anything amongst the students that made him think any different of them, and the teachers who sat at the head table didn't seem to have anything to say that would overly affect the school. After some brooding, the old wizard decided that the only way for him to satisfy his curiosity would be to take a stroll around the school before retiring to his bed. He stood up and walked out of the room.

Dumbledore wasn't the only one who had a strange feeling during the banquet. Professor Severus Snape, the Potions Master, also felt that something wasn't right. During the banquet, he sat more quietly than usual and didn't seem to enjoy in the eating and talking even as little as he normally did. Something just didn't feel right. Potter and his friends weren't misbehaving as far as he could tell. They were happily eating with the other Gryffindors. He left the Great Hall a bit earlier than the students and teachers and made his way to his quarters in Slytherin House which is located near the dungeons. Once he entered his room, he walked into a smaller closet-type room, but this room has nothing to do with clothing. In this room, Professor Snape worked on his Occlumency and sifted through the thoughts of various people throughout the school. Tonight, as he sat sifting through the general, happy thoughts of Hogwarts students and teachers, he came across a mind that seemed rather foreign and less than happy.


	2. Who What Where

Who? Where? Why?

            "This is….unusual," growled the Potions Master slowly as he exited his quiet room and entered his office and sat behind his desk.  His contact with the stranger's mind had him both physically and mentally exhausted. It also left him confused and he immediately decided that he should tell the headmaster immediately.  As he stood up, he glanced at the small clock on his desk, he sat back down again. The clock read 1:36 am. Professor Dumbledore was a remarkable wizard, but any decent person would be asleep at this hour.  Should he wake Dumbledore and call this to his attention, or should he wait until early morning? 

            While making his decision, his mind seemed to wander off, back to the thoughts of a stranger who had taken up hiding deep in the castle's Chamber of Secrets. "It is probably necessary to…"

"Who am I?" A voice growled from a dark corner, deep within the Chamber of Secrets.  The voice was dark, but it also had a hint of despair in it as well. Crouched in the corner, was a man with shoulder length, dark brown hair that was disheveled. He was reading a piece of paper with a strange language written on it.  "Burton Lee Clift, age 33….married, no, widower…" the man read slowly and quietly. He recognized the name and age as his own, but could not bring himself to remember his wife who must have died recently, so recently, that he still wore a golden ring on his left hand. "Strange, very strange," he said, his voice was now almost a whisper, and he moved his right hand to the ring on his left, but he could not make himself take it off just now. "This is all I have left of me, of who I really am."

The soap-like substance worked wonders on his cuts and bruises. Not only did it clean them, but it almost instantly healed the minor scrapes and cuts. It healed all of his bruises even more quickly. "Where am I," he mused to himself while tending to his wounds. "Looks like some sort of a castle." The word castle seemed to bring back some sort of memory. It didn't last long, but he seemed to remember that castles were a familiar site to see to him. This castle was more like a beacon of light to him when he came running out of that evil forest where he had awoken.  However, the truth was both the forest and the castle were very strange places to be. "This almost looks like some kind of a school, but castles aren't schools. They're housing for kings and other royalty. They normally see no more than four children at a time, and those were the princes and princesses." Also, ever since he came in the building, he felt like he was being, well, watched, but every time he turned and looked about, there was nobody there. It was an uneasy feeling, and he did not know whether to ignore it or to be alarmed by it.

                        "Questions, questions and more questions," the man said slowly as he unfolded his pack for something to sleep on. I may actually go out tom….."

            With that, Professor Snape awoke with a start. He had fallen asleep at his desk and there was still an intruder in the castle. Not that he worried much about the students. They were mostly idiots anyway; even his own house was becoming a bit worthy of the sanitation department. What Professor Snape worried about was the destruction of the entire wizarding world. There were many extremely intelligent witches and wizards, and the world would be much less without them in it. 

This time the clock read 5:15 am. There could be no more waiting. He stood up, grabbed a potion that cured neck cramps, and walked into his bedroom where he quickly changed into a clean robe. Then, like that, the Potions Master left his quarters and headed straight to the headmaster's office. Normally, this walk felt extremely long, but today, Snape had more important things on his mind than complaining about the distance between his quarters and the headmaster's office. When he reached the gargoyle that guarded the entrance, he whispered "Peppermint," and the statue moved away revealing a staircase which spiraled upward. He stepped on one of the steps and waited until it reached Dumbledore's office and then stepped off.

"Could I have a moment, Headmaster," asked Snape coolly as he stood by the office door. To his surprise, the door swung open to reveal the elderly wizard sitting at his desk with two cups of freshly poured tea. "Ah, Severus.," he said "I've been expecting you." This surprised Snape more. "You are troubled by something. I could tell you were last night when you left the banquet early. Tell me, what ails you." "It seems, Headmaster," began Snape "that there is an intruder hiding in the Chamber of Secrets. I do not know if he is dangerous, but something tells me he is not to be worried about. My contact with his mind only showed me that he was a confused person seeking asylum. I believe," he continued "that it would be in the best interest of the school to pay this person a visit."


	3. Absent Mind

As classes dragged on that day, Professor Snape's mind kept wandering back to thoughts that were not his own. At times, he felt as tough he were the intruder as he came across thoughts that were purely private. There were thoughts of a nameless woman and a sense of despair that goes along with the loss of a loved one. "What do these,. WHAT DO YOU WANT?" Professor realized that he snapped at the whimpering idiot standing by his desk. 

Neville Longbottom stood on shaky legs after hearing this outburst from the usually calm and menacing professor. "Sir, well, I, uh um" Longbottom struggled compose himself. "Yesss.." said Snape, now displaying his normal menacingly cold voice, though he was silently rebuking himself for allowing himself to be startled out of a daydream in his own class, where he, of all those present, should be the most attentive. "Something isn't right with my potion." "Why am I not surprised," Snape said to the boy. It appeared that yet again, the pudgy boy had made some idiotic mistake and added the porcupine quills instead of the unicorn hair resulting in a concoction that was the color of rotten mustard and not clear emerald green. The potion was also foaming and about to boil over onto the clean floor of his classroom. "Out! All of you. Now!" Snape snapped as he dismissed the class. 

Slowly, he approached the smoking cauldron and was contemplating his own impending doom. To his pleasant surprise, the cauldron did not explode, but in it was a concoction that was a potion all in its own. Of course, the potion was toxic, but still, the curious Potions Master filled a beaker with the foul, reeking substance before making the rest disappear. Maybe this would give the Gryfindor NEWT Potions class something to research. Maybe, but not probably. Normally, under these circumstances, the Potions Master was in charge of discovering the good and bad properties of newly discovered potions. Students had no such time for things like potions, oh no, they had much more important things like quiddich and playing pranks on their adversarial houses. Nope, no time in this school for studying hideous, reeking substances with unknown effects.

Rumors began circulating after that first class. Several Gryffindors happily discussed the incident after class. Professor Snape's outburst at Neville had caused quite a few sniggers from one group of Gryffindors in particular. "If you didn't notice," began a rather haughty Hermione Granger, " he fell asleep in class." Standing next to her, Ronald Weasly was sniggering out of control. "Its just..he..not..like..well..the average every day greasy haired git we normally get stuck with." Hermione smacked him on the shoulder for the remark with the "respect him, he is a teacher" remark. Ron held a mock-hurt expression, but quickly dropped it and took his girlfriend's hand in resignation. Behind them, Harry Potter was busy flirting with a young girl from Ravenclaw. "Oy, Harry" Ron called "kiss now, tell later, we're going to be late to Transfiguration." "So, what did you get out of potions today," Ron said with a slight laugh. Harry smiled lightly at the comment, but he was genuinely concerned. It was definitely not like Snape of all professors to just fall asleep in class. Something was up, but what. "Well," he retorted, "I guess I learned not to add porcupine quills in the place of unicorn hair to certain healing potions." "I also learned that Snape is not the person to disturb while he is sleeping." At that, the three students made their way down the hallway to class. The sniggering and quips about Snape and his incident in class continued their way around the school as can be expected with this bunch of students.

Humiliated, Snape quickly made for Dumbledore's office. He just could not continue with his classes while wild, strange memories invaded his mind and distracted him from his classes. "Still troubled are you, Severus." Dumbledore was standing outside his office as if he were awaiting Snape's visit. "Why don't we step inside and discus this small matter?" Dumbledore was smiling in that way that only he could get away with without being stared into the ground by the grouchy Potions Master. "This intruder," began Snape "I still do not believe him to be a threat to the students. He seems to be, Headmaster, a victim of sorts." Snape paused for a while awaiting any comments from Dumbledore. When none came, he continued, "The students are beginning to suspect that something is amiss, and it will not be long until that Potter and his crew of miscreants start poking their noses in this mess." These words caused Dumbledore's smile to return. In his opinion, Severus's misgivings about Harry Potter and his friends was quite amusing. "Maybe, now would be the time to pay our guest a visit," the old wizard mused to no one in particular. "Severus, why don't you use your Occlumency to communicate with this intruder and allow him to know that someone will be paying him a visit and not to be alarmed." "Very well, Headmaster" said Snape. Severus closed his eyes and seemed to be in deep thought for a moment. "It is done," he said and slowly opened his eyes. "Well, lets go right some wrongs."

The two wizards left Dumbledore's office and set off in the direction of the bathroom which housed the entrance to the Chamber of Secrets.


End file.
